On Saturday, almost 50 years after Israel came under attack on Yom Kippur in 1973, hundreds of Hamas fighters crossed into its southern border of the country. The unexpected land, air and sea caught Tel Aviv off-guard, a major oversight that cost it dearly.
Despite Israel striking back hard, launching major retaliatory attacks in the Gaza Strip, the attacks have raised questions as to why one of the most capable intelligence agencies in the world, failed to see it coming. "It looks quite similar to what happened at that time," said retired General Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel's National Security Council. "As we can see it, Israel was completely surprised, by a very well-coordinated attack," he told a briefing with reporters.
The attack not only defied Israel's assumption that Hamas wouldn't dare to carry out major attacks in Israel fearing a backlash, but also raised brows on whether the current domestic political turmoil in the country may have played a role in the apparent intelligence failure. "All of Israel is asking itself: Where is the IDF, where are the police, where is the security?" agreed Eli Maron, the former head of the Israeli Navy, alongside him in the studio. "It’s a colossal failure; the [defence] establishments have simply failed, with vast consequences."
Interestingly, unlike the West Bank, Gaza had been relatively quiet for the last many years, apart from sporadic cross-border clashes mainly involving the smaller Islamic Jihad movement. Hamas wasn't very active and Israel was busy working on normalizing ties with Arab monarchies. Though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government had never shied away from taking an uncompromising stance towards Hamas, it adopted a 'carrot and stick' towards Gaza. Economic incentives were offered for Gazans to work in Israel or the occupied West Bank, but it continued to maintain a tight blockade and the constant threat of airstrikes.
"It was a security failure, undermining what was thought to be an aggressive and successful layered approach toward Gaza by Israel," Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank told Reuters.
Israeli security analysts believe that the attack was long in planning and was very coordinated and could surprise Israel "tactically and cause devastating damage."
Reports quoting US officials also suggest that the Hamas attack came when the deal normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was close to being clinched. It was also the Hamas sending a not-so-subtle message to the Arab countries that the Palestinians could not be ignored if Israel wanted security and that any Saudi deal would scupper the detente with Iran.